Lila and I tread towardthe Salon of Stars, the darkness cold but living. I listen for it now, between the buzz of the kitchen, the list of chores; when I press a palm to the stone and slow my breathing, I hear it. Shifting, beneath the palace. Disturbances. Screams.
Something is down there.
“You mastered that quickly,” Lila whispers over my shoulder, to the flame blossoming from my hand.
“My genius seems…transformed.”
“Can sex impact our genius?”
I stop short, the flame flickering. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“Because of last week.”
“I don’t know what happened last week.”
“I don’t owe you that.” The flame flares. “I don’t owe you anything.”
The words ricochet along the stones, slinging back to me like slaps. The fire crackles, dampens.
“I’m sorry,” I rush. “That was—”
“You assume parts of me as well.”
“I…” The flame dissipates. Darkness curtains us. I want to ask what she means again, but instead let space unfold between us.
“I do not enjoy sex,” she finally says.
Comforting words, reassurances, rise like heat, but I do not know her years just because I fill her days now, do not know what she’s been through and how it’s made her feel.
“Okay,” I say instead.
“I really do not enjoy sex,” she whispers. “But it’s always been that way. Even before the king.”
I search for the right words, to recall another in my life who feels such as this. But I’m not sure. Sex—and sometimes its accompanying violence—is so prevalent at Versara that I do not know what the absence of it would look and feel like.
“That’s okay,” I say again.
“I’m not innocent or childish. It’s just that I don’t think I experience attraction in the ways others describe. I feel other things—love, affection. Just not lust.”
“That makes sense.”
“And it’s not like I haven’t had sex,” Lila adds. “I’ve had it with males I thought I liked, ones who were kind.”
“Have you experienced desire with females?”
“I don’t experience it with anyone. It’s not the other creatures—it’s me. There is something…missing in me. Perhaps I’m not even a faerie—I’m some unfeeling accident.”
My knuckles brush against hers. “Just because your desires differ from someone else’s does not make you less than. I know we haven’t known each other long, but you’re the most creative and intelligent faerie I’ve ever met.”
“Avery…”
“Listen. The fact that you are also the kindest, most loving faerie, too, is a privilege I get to experience every day. You have—”
My throat tightens.You have changed me already, irrevocably.But that is too much, I am being too much. Suddenly, I am grateful for the darkness, too. Lila squeezes my hand, and I squeeze back.
Then her arm finds my shoulder, pulls me into an embrace. A dam has been broken, and the emotions of the past weeks, the past month, flood through me, and I tremble. We still cannot seeeach other but I tremble—not for what has been said in the dark, but for what Lila has made me feel in the light.
